Search results for ""university of south carolina press""

Newly revised, this is the definitive guide to the state dog of South Carolina. Since the origin of the breed in the early twentieth-century, the Boykin spaniel has proven to be a crackerjack retriever, remarkable trick artist, and family favorite. This revised edition of ""The Boykin Spaniel: South Carolina's Dog"" by breed enthusiasts Mike Creel and Lynn Kelley is written for all lovers of the Palmetto State's famous little brown sporting dog and chronicles the breed's history, profiles the dog's distinctive personality, describes its sterling abilities, and records the fond memories of a distinguished cast of trainers and owners. A gregarious creature with an uncanny ability to switch freely from playful family pet to disciplined hunting dog, the Boykin spaniel was named the state dog of South Carolina in 1985. By 2000 more than sixteen thousand Boykins from forty-nine states and numerous foreign countries had been registered with the Boykin Spaniel Society, based in Camden, South Carolina. Creel and Kelley offer an unparalleled resource for breed owners and devotees as well as a celebration of this home-grown hunter and companion, truly a dog for all seasons. Their heavily illustrated revised and updated edition also includes the breed standard, lists of award-winning dogs and owners, and a comprehensive bibliography of the breed.

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In the closing decade of the twentieth century, Don DeLillo emerged from the privileged status of a writer's writer to become by any measure - productivity, influence, scope, gravitas - the dominant novelist of fin-de-millennium America. Beginning in 1982 with ""The Names and continuing with White Noise and Underworld"", DeLillo defined himself as a provocative, articulate anatomist of American culture. Dewey offers an astute assessment of this daunting yet important writer's four-decade cultural critique. Dewey finds DeLillo's concerns to be organized around three rubrics that mark the writer's own creative evolution: the love of the street, the embrace of the word, and the celebration of the soul. Dewey takes the reader through the novelist's hip avant-garde satires of the mid-1960s, his dense interrogations of the power of language and the spell of narrative in the 1980s and 1990s, and his recent efforts to transcend the immediate. Dewey explores DeLillo's fascination with Eastern philosophies, interest in Native American traditions, passion for jazz, and deep roots in Catholicism.

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This title includes rare firsthand accounts of slavery from across the Palmetto State collected together for the first time. Out of the hundreds of published slave narratives, only a handful exist specific to South Carolina, and most of these are not readily available to modern readers. Edited by Susanna Ashton, this collection restores to print seven slave narratives documenting the lived realities of slavery as it existed across the Palmetto State's upcountry, midlands, and lowcountry, from plantation culture to urban servitude. First published between the late eighteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth, these richly detailed firsthand accounts present a representative cross section of slave experiences, from religious awakenings and artisan apprenticeships to sexual exploitations and harrowing escapes. In their distinctive individual voices, narrators celebrate and mourn the lives of fellow slaves, contemplate the meaning of freedom, and share insights into the social patterns and cultural controls exercised during a turbulent period in American history. Each narrative is preceded by an introduction to place its content and publication history in historical context. The volume also features an afterword surveying other significant slave narratives and related historical documents on South Carolina. ""I Belong to South Carolina"" reinserts a chorus of powerful voices of the dispossessed into South Carolina's public history, reminding us of the cruelties of the past and the need for vigilant guardianship of liberty in the present and future.

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Addresses the ways in which Jewish people and religious customs are presented in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Probing questions about the roots of modern anti-Semitism in relationship to the New Testament, Tyson concludes that there is a deep and complex ambivalence in Luke-Acts, making the texts both profoundly pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish.

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A series of road trips through the American South leads to a personal confrontation with history.

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Drawing on original archival research in the rhetoric of civil rights, the author explores this largely underexamined rhetorical studies site In Liturgy of Change: Rhetorics of the Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Elizabeth Miller examines civil rights mass meetings as a transformative rhetorical, and religious, experience. While rhetorical scholars have analyzed other components of the civil rights movement, including sit-ins, marches, and voter registration campaigns, as well as meeting speeches delivered by well-known figures, the mass meeting itself still is a significant but underexamined site in rhetorical studies. Miller's "liturgy of change" framework brings attention to the pattern of religious genres—song, prayer, and testimony—that structured the events, and the ways these genres created rhetorical opportunities for ordinary people to speak up and develop their activism. To recover and reconstruct these patterns, Miller analyzes archival audio recordings of mass meetings held in Greenville and Hattisburg, Mississippi; Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, Alabama; Savannah, Sumter, and Albany, Georgia; St. Augustine, Florida; and Danville, Virginia.

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Founded on a small parcel of land in 1801, the University of South Carolina has expanded beyond the boundaries of its original campus, the historic Horseshoe, to become a large urban research university. Throughout its history, South Carolina's flagship university has created opportunity and knowledge, educated hundreds of thousands of students, and enriched the cultural and social lives of countless community members and supporters.The University of South Carolina In Focus celebrates the beauty of its campus architecture and the university's commitment to academic and research excellence, unparalleled student experience, and its thrilling Gamecock sports that fans cheer throughout the year. Enjoy this colorful "walk" across campus and relive your own experience at one of America's most beautiful universities. Whether you are a current student, an alumnus, or a faithful Gamecock fan, this album will bring your memories of Carolina into focus.

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When civil rights leader Hosea Lorenzo Williams died in 2000, U.S. Congressman John Lewis said of him, "Hosea Williams must be looked upon as one of the founding fathers of the new America. Through his actions, he helped liberate all of us."In this first comprehensive biography of Williams, Rolundus Rice demonstrates the truth in Lewis's words and argues that Williams's activism in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was of central importance to the success of the larger civil rights movement. Rice traces Williams's journey from a local activist in Georgia to a national leader and one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s chief lieutenants. He helped plan the Selma-to-Montgomery march and walked shoulder-to-shoulder with Lewis across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on "Bloody Sunday." While his hard-charging tactics were counter to the diplomatic approach of other SCLC leaders, Rice argues that it was this contrast in styles that made the organization successful.Andrew Young Jr., former SCLC executive director, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and mayor of Atlanta, provides a foreword.

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Women have played a vital role in shaping the course of South Carolina since the earliest days of human settlement. From organizers to educators, from medical professionals to civic leaders, from politicians to cultural icons, the entries in 101 Women Who Shaped South Carolina shed light on the many and varied contributions women have made both within the state and beyond. Drawing from the landmark text The South Carolina Encyclopedia, this volume presents readers with short biographical essays that are informative and accessible. Arranged chronologically, they provide, in their totality, a concise history of the state and the women who shaped it. A foreword is provided by Walter Edgar, Neuffer Professor of Southern Studies Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina.

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The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History presents the first such narrative of the earth's tenth largest body of water. In this beautifully written and illustrated volume, John S. Sledge explores the people, ships, and cities that have made the Gulf's human history and culture so rich. Many famous figures who sailed the Gulf's viridian waters are highlighted, including Ponce de León, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Francis Drake, Jean Laffite, Tyrone Power, Richard Henry Dana, Libbie Custer, Elizabeth Agassiz, Ernest Hemingway, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as Charles Dwight Sigsbee, at the helm of the doomed Maine. But Sledge also introduces a fascinating and diverse array of people connected to maritime life in the Gulf, including Mesoamerican pyramid builders, Spanish conquistadores, French pirates, Creole women, Cajun fishermen, African American stevedores, British jack-tars, and Greek sponge divers.Gulf events of global historical importance are detailed, such as the only defeat of armed and armored steamships by wooden sailing vessels, the first accurate deep-sea survey and bathymetric map of any ocean basin, the development of shipping containers by a former truck driver frustrated with antiquated loading practices, and the worst environmental disaster in American annals.Occasionally shifting focus ashore, Sledge explains how people representing a gumbo of ethnicities built some of the world's most exotic cities--Havana, way station for conquistadores and treasure-filled galleons; New Orleans, the Big Easy, famous for its beautiful French Quarter, Mardi Gras, and relaxed morals; and oft-besieged Veracruz, Mexico's oldest city, founded in 1519 by Hernán Cortés. Throughout history the residents of these cities and their neighbors along the littoral have struggled with challenges both natural and human-induced--devastating hurricanes, frightening epidemics, catastrophic oil spills, and conflicts ranging from dockside brawls to pirate raids, foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution. In the modern era the Gulf has become critical to energy Production, fisheries, tourism, and international trade, even as it is threatened by pollution and climate change. The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History is a work of verve and sweep that illuminates both the risks of life on the water and the riches that come from its bounty.

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Robert Smalls, born a slave in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina, gained fame as an African American hero of the American Civil War. The Freedom Ship of Robert Smalls tells the inspirational story of Small’s life as a slave, his boyhood dream of freedom, and his bold and daring plan as a young man to commandeer a Confederate gunboat from Charleston Harbor and escape with fifteen fellow slaves and family members. Smalls joined the Union Navy, rose to the rank of captain, and became the first African American to command a U.S. service ship. After the war Smalls returned to Beaufort, bought the home of his former master, and began a long career in state and national politics.Originally published in 1971, this new edition of The Freedom Ship of Robert Smalls features Louise Meriwether’s original narrative, now illustrated by the colorful paintings of renowned Southern artist Jonathan Green.

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The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth was originally released in 1994 and was the first published book from acclaimed writer Ron Rash. This twentieth anniversary edition takes us back to where it all began with ten linked short stories, framed like a novel, introducing us to a trio of memorable narrators - Tracy, Randy, and Vincent - making their way against the hardscrabble backdrop of the North Carolina foothills. With a comedic touch that may surprise readers familiar only with Rash's later, darker fiction, these earnest tales reveal the hard lessons of good whiskey, bad marriages, weak foundations, familial legacies, questionable religious observances, and the dubious merits of possum breeding, as well as the hard-won reconciliations with self, others, and home that can only be garnered in good time. The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth shows us the promising beginnings of a master storyteller honing his craft and contributing from the start to the fine traditions of southern fiction and lore. This Southern Revivals edition includes a new introduction from the author and a contextualizing preface from series editor Robert H. Brinkmeyer, director of the University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies.

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Tideland Treasure is an illustrated guide to the beaches and marshes of the Eastern United States coast, encompassing seashores and wetlands from Ocean City, New Jersey, to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Rich with true-to-life illustrations and hand-written text, this handsome guidebook captures the nature of the sea, beach, salt marsh, plants, and animals of the region in an easy to understand text. Common names are used to make the information memorable for casual beachcombers and amateur naturalists alike.This newly expanded edition includes fifty new colour illustrations, a new foreword, five new essays, a new glossary of tideland terms, and a new index of common and scientific names of tideland species.

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This book describes a career politician's pragmatic remedies for broken government, drawn from a half-century of political leadership experience.""Performance is better than promise"" has long been the motto of Ernest F. ""Fritz"" Hollings, former governor of South Carolina and 6-term U.S. Senator. In this political autobiography of his 50-year career in public service, Hollings takes to task our flawed political machine and pulls from his own experiences compelling - and often colorfully candid - accounts how one makes government work in spite of itself. Confrontational at times toward those individuals and issues he cites as to blame for deadlocking government and putting America ""in the ditch"", Hollings proves through his crystal clear prose he is deeply committed to improving our system of government, strengthening regulations on free trade, countering dependence on wooing campaign contributions, and enhancing our communication and education systems to better compete in an information-driven global market. Hollings details specific instances from his past of moments when bold leadership and smart use of resources and authority led to positive differences in the lives of Americans. It is his mission through this volume to reinvigorate a floundering system and call good people and good ideas back into the service of America's future.

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From its summits to its shores, South Carolina brims with life and unparalleled beauty thanks to its abundant array of native and naturalized flora, all carefully documented in this revised and expanded edition of A Guide to the Wildflowers of South Carolina. Dramatic advances in plant taxonomy and ecology have occurred since the guide's publication 20 years ago; new species have been discovered while others struggle to survive in the face of vanishing habitats and climate change.The authors, all experienced botanists, offer essays on carnivorous plants, native orchids, Carolina bays, the roles and effects of fire and agriculture on the landscape, and detailed descriptions of the plant communities throughout the state's major natural regions. This expanded edition catalogs nearly 1,000 species organized by habitat, with descriptions, color photographs, range maps, and comments on pharmacological uses, suitability for garden cultivation, origin of common and scientific names, and conservation status.

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Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877–1934) established a reputation as one of the early twentieth century's foremost authorities on the history of African American slavery and the Old South. An empiricist, Phillips approached his subjects analytically and dispassionately, and his scholarship shaped historical investigation of the South for decades. Phillips was an empiricist and based his writing on an array of primary sources, including a growing collection of photographs he accumulated during his research. These images of plantation crops and machinery, agricultural scenes, distinctive architecture, white southerners, and former slaves and their descendants collectively record much about the life and labour in the rural South three decades before the Farm Security Administration undertook its own documentary projects during the New Deal.In Seeing the New South, photography historian Patricia Bellis Bixel and Phillips scholar and historian John David Smith delve into the visual record Phillips left behind, publishing many of these photographs for the first time, and integrating his photographic archive with his research and teachings on the history of the South. For example, his Life and Labor in the Old South, published in 1929, was well illustrated with useful photographs. The bulk of Phillips's papers resides in the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. The collection includes sixty lantern slides and many photographic prints that Phillips employed in his work. Bixel and Smith uncovered another five hundred images that greatly expanded Phillips's visual archive. Taken between 1904 and 1930, these images provide glimpses of a Southern landscape rarely seen and even more rarely photographed, offering a striking visual account of early-twentieth-century life in the rural South.Phillips deliberately sought out images of buildings and agricultural scenes emblematic of the South, representative portraits of white and black southerners, and distinctive depictions of farm and town life. Some photographs reinforce Phillips's arguments about the general backwardness of an impoverished rural South and about the limitations of the region's agricultural and industrial economies. But his images also documented active independent black and white communities with diverse economic practices and subcultures. This first-ever collection of Phillips's photographs provides dramatic documentation of economic and social life during an era seldom captured on film, yielding striking visual portraits of human dignity in black and white.

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An examination of the influential role music played in the lives of elite southern women during the antebellum periodIn Charleston Belles Abroad, Candace Bailey examines the vital role music collections played in the lives of elite women of Charleston, South Carolina, in the years leading up to the Civil War.Bailey has studied a substantial archive of music held at several southern libraries, including the library in the historic Aiken-Rhett House, once owned by William Aiken Jr., a successful businessman, rice planter, and governor of South Carolina. Her skill as a musicologist enables her to examine the collections as primary sources for gaining a better understanding of musical culture, instruction, private performance, cultural tourism, and the history of the music industry during this period.The bound and unbound collections and their associated publications show that international travel and music education in Europe were common among Charleston’s elite families. While abroad, the budding musicians purchased the latest music publications and brought them back to Charleston, where they often performed them in private and at semipublic events.Through a narrow exploration of the collections of these elite women, Bailey exposes the cultural priorities within one of the South’s most influential cities and illuminates both the commonalities and discrepancies in the training of young women to enter society. A noteworthy contribution to southern and urban history, Charleston Belles Abroad provides a deep study of music in the context of transatlantic values, interpersonal relationships, and stability and tumult in the South during the nineteenth century.

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Peter Wolfe's study of Penelope Fitzgerald's canon illuminates writings he characterizes as possessing unerring dramatic judgment, a friendly and fluid style, and lyrical and precise descriptive passages. In this survey of Fitzgerald's life and career, Wolfe explains how the British novelist brings resources of talent and craft, thought and feeling, courage and vulnerability, to the biographies and novels that have earned her renown. With readings of a broad range of her published works, including her final novel, The Blue Flower, Wolfe describes the unfolding of Fitzgerald's writing as a subtle, ongoing process. He maintains that the novels, though plain and rambling at first glance, grow fuller, stranger, and more stirring the more we invest in them. He details Fitzgerald's skill at sequencing events so as to unsettle readers and her ability to enhance motifs by not leaning too hard on them. Wolfe suggests that Fitzgerald's refusal to overplay effects and emotions, while at first puzzling in its disdain for drama, turns out to be one of her chief virtues, for she enables larger associations to emerge as she keeps big dramatic scenes from interfering with wider patterns. While enumerating Fitzgerald's many talents, Wolfe ultimately attributes much of her success to her style. He concludes that her exceptionally disciplined prose, which gives voice to her candor and compassion, imbues her work with a sense of mood, place, and character.

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An unprecedented wave of interest in building new cultural institutions swept through America from the end of the Civil War through the first decade of the twentieth century. Traditionally historians have told us that this sea change was the work of various elites intent on controlling the turmoil and divisions that accompanied the industrialization of the American economy. In Building Culture, Richard Teichgraeber rejects this hierarchical account to pursue one that highlights the multiplicity of attitudes and interests that were on display in America's first great effort to build national cultural institutions. Teichgraeber also lays the groundwork of a new interpretive framework for understanding this multisided effort. Most native-born American champions of ""culture,"" he contends, viewed it as an authentically individualistic ideal. For them the concept continued to carry its antebellum meaning of self-culture—that is, individual self-development or self-improvement—and thus was quite resistant to closure around any single fixed definition of what being cultivated might mean. They also recognized that in America culture had to connect with the choices of ordinary men and women and therefore had to be fashioned to serve the uses of a democratic rather than an aristocratic society. To show how and why this inclusive view of culture was accompanied by a prodigious expansion of American cultural institutions, Teichgraeber also explores two of the central but still inadequately mapped developments in the intellectual and cultural history of the industrial era: the multifaceted—and ultimately successful—effort to secure Ralph Waldo Emerson a central place in American culture at large; and the growth and consolidation of the American university system, certainly the most important of the new cultural institutions built during the industrial era. Elegantly written and featuring twenty-two illustrations, Building Culture expands our knowledge of the formation of modern American culture and opens new paths of inquiry into contemporary cultural and intellectual concerns.

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The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670-1720 is a graphic account of South Carolina's tumultuous beginnings, when calamity, violence, and ruthless exploitation were commonplace. With extraordinary detail and analysis, John J. Navin reveals the hardships that were experienced by people of all ethnicities and all stations in life during the first half-century of South Carolina's existence—years of misery caused by nature, pathogens, greed, and recklessness. From South Carolina's founding in 1670 through 1720, a cadre of men rose to political and economic prominence, while ordinary colonists, enslaved Africans, and indigenous groups became trapped in a web of violence and oppression. Navin explains how eight English aristocrats, the Lords Proprietors, came to possess the vast Carolina grant and then enacted elaborate plans to recruit and control colonists as part of a grand moneymaking scheme. But those plans went awry, and the mainstays of the economy became hog and cattle ranching, lumber products, naval stores, deerskin exports, and the calamitous Indian slave trade. The settlers' relentless pursuit of wealth set the colony on a path toward prosperity but also toward a fatal dependency on slave labour. Rice would produce immense fortunes in South Carolina, but not during the colony's first fifty years. Religious and political turmoil instigated by settlers from Barbados eventually led to a total rejection of proprietary authority. Using a variety of primary sources, Navin describes challenges that colonists faced, setbacks they experienced, and the effects of policies and practices initiated by elites and proprietors. Storms, fires, epidemics, and armed conflicts destroyed property, lives, and dreams. Threatened by the Native Americans they exploited, by the Africans they enslaved, and by their French and Spanish rivals, South Carolinians lived in continual fear. For some it was the price they paid for financial success. But for most there were no riches, and the possibility of a sudden, violent death was overshadowed by the misery of their day-to-day existence.

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A fresh examination of Harper's body of work as an archive of Black life, thought, and culture.The first book devoted to the groundbreaking poet's work, Understanding Michael S. Harper locates his poetic project within Black expressive tradition. The study examines poems drawn from the eleven volumes of verse that Harper (1938-2016) produced between 1970 and 2010, bringing attention to his poetry's sustained engagement with music, literature, and the visual arts. Author Michael A. Antonucci offers readers an account of the poet's career while assessing his verse and providing a sense of its perspective on Black America and American experience.Throughout his examination of Harper's verse, Antonucci builds upon the critical attention the poet received at the outset of his career—he was twice nominated for the National Book Award. Exploring the poet's celebrated examinations of history, kinship, and Black music, Understanding Michael S. Harper develops and expands critical dialogues about the poet and his body of work, which, Antonucci argues, presents a counter narrative about the composition and origins of the United States, reshaping prevailing discourse about race, nation, and identity.

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A panoramic and accessible guide to one of the most celebrated—and controversial—authors of the twentieth centuryPhilip Roth was one of the most prominent, controversial, and prolific American writers of his generation. By the time of his death in 2018, he had won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and three PEN/Faulkner Awards. In Understanding Philip Roth, Matthew A. Shipe provides a brief biographical sketch followed by an illuminating and accessible reading of Roth's novels, illustrating how the writer constructed one of the richest bodies of work in American letters, capturing the absurdities, contradictions, and turmoil that shaped the United States in the six decades following the Second World War.Questions of Jewish American identity, the irrationality of male sexual desire, the nature of the American experiment—these are a few of the central concerns that run throughout Roth's oeuvre, and across which his early and late novels speak to one another. Moreover, Shipe considers how Roth's fiction engaged with its historical moment, providing a broader context for understanding how his novels address the changes that transformed American culture during his lifetime.

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An illustrated flight across the SoutheastBirdlife invites readers into the lives of birds we often meet in the southeastern United States. Writer, scientist, and illustrator Todd Ballantine presents the habits and habitats, colorings, migratory paths, and songs of nearly one hundred birds of the Southeast that he has come to know so well. He wings us across diverse landscapes, along the coasts of states from Virginia to Texas, and in elds and forests in between, providing keen insights and tips for recognizing birds on the branch, on the beach, or in the air.Along the coast and estuaries, you will meet the double-crested cormorant and the herring gull; near marshes and wetlands, the American coot and the great blue heron; in elds and open areas, the killdeer and the savannah sparrow. In the brush and at the wood's edge, you will encounter the dark-eyed junco and the white-eyed vireo, and in the forest—if you are lucky—you might hear the evocative call of the nocturnal Chuckwill's-widow.Birdlife delights with Ballantine's own artistic and precise illustrations, hand-lettered text, easy-to-follow presentations, and memorable descriptions. His black-and-white bird renderings provide easy identi cation of shape and form. A unique book to enjoy in nature's habitats, high and low, Birdlife is a must-have companion for birding enthusiasts and anyone intrigued by the lives of birds.

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The South Caroliniana Library, located on the historic Horseshoe of the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia, is one of the premier research archives and special collections repositories in South Carolina and the American Southeast. The library's holdings--manuscripts, published materials, university archives, and visual materials--are essential to understanding the Palmetto State and Southern culture as it has evolved over the past 300 years.When opened as the South Carolina College library in 1840 it was the first freestanding academic library building in the United States. Designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument, it is built in the Greek Revival style and features a replica of the reading room that once housed Thomas Jefferson's personal library in the second Library of Congress. When the college built a larger main library (now known as the McKissick Museum) in 1940, the Mills building became the home of ""Caroliniana""--published and unpublished materials relating to the history, literature, and culture of South Carolina.Through a dedicated mining of the resources this library has held, art historian John M. Bryan crafted this comprehensive narrative history of the building's design, construction, and renovations, which he enhanced with personal entries from the diaries and letters of the students, professors, librarians, and politicians who crossed its threshold. A treasure trove of Caroliniana itself, this colorful volume, featuring 95 photographs and illustrations, celebrates a beautiful and historic structure, as well as the rich and vibrant history of the Palmetto State and the dedicated citizenry who have worked so hard to preserve it.A foreword is provided by W. Eric Emerson, director, South Carolina Department of History and Archives.

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Revelations on craft from a foundational scholar of Cormac McCarthyDevotees of Cormac McCarthy's novels are legion, and deservedly so. Embracing Vocation, which tells the tale of his journey to become one of America's greatest living writers, will be invaluable to scholars and literary critics—and to the many fans—interested in his work.Dianne C. Luce, a foundational scholar of McCarthy's writing, through extensive archival research, examines the first fifteen years of his career and his earliest novels. Novel by novel, Luce traces each book's evolution. In the process she unveils McCarthy's working processes as well as his personal, literary, and professional influences, highlighting his ferocious devotion to both his craft and burgeoning art. Luce invites us to see the fascinating evolution of an American author with a unique vision all his own. Until there is a full-on biography, this study, along with Luce's previous, Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee Period, is the finest available portrait of an American genius unfolding.

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In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish—completed by bassist Dean Feldman and drummer Soni Sonefeld—played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, becoming one of the biggest independent acts in the region.In Only Wanna Be with You, Tim Sommer, the ultimate insider who signed the band to Atlantic Records in 1993, pulls back the curtain on the band's indie days; the chart-topping success of their major-label debut, cracked rear view; the year of Hootie (1995); the lean years; Darius Rucker's history-making rise in country music; and one of the most remarkable comeback stories of the century. Featuring new and extensive interviews with the band members, some of the band's most famous fans, and stories from the recording studio, tour bus, and golf course, this book is essential reading for Hootie lovers and music buffs.

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We the people-these words embody the ethos of what it means to be an American citizen. As individuals we are a tapestry of colors and creeds; united we are a nation committed to preserving our hard-earned freedom. In this heart-stirring collection of watercolor portraits of military veterans--one from each of the fifty states--artist Mary Whyte captures this ethos as well as the dedication, responsibility, and courage it takes to fulfill that promise.Those who raise their hands to serve may join for different reasons, but all-along with their families-make the extraordinary commitment to place the needs of the country before their own. Whyte gives us the opportunity to meet and to see some of them-to really see them. Whyte's portrait of America includes individuals from many walks of life, some still active duty, and from every branch: women and men, old and young, and from a wide swath of ethnicities, befitting our glorious melting pot. From a mayor to an astronaut, from a teacher to a garbage collector, from a business entrepreneur to someone who is homeless, Whyte renders their unique and exceptional lives with great care and gentle brush strokes.We the People is not only a tour across and through these vast United States, it is a tour through the heart and soul, the duty and the commitment of the people who protect not only our Constitution and our country but our very lives. We can only be deeply grateful, inspired, and humbled by all of them.

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Harry Potter and Beyond explores J. K. Rowling's beloved best-selling series and its virtuoso reimagining of British literary traditions. Weaving together elements of fantasy, the school-story novel, detective fiction, allegory, and bildungsroman, the Harry Potter novels evade simplistic categorization as children's or fantasy literature. Because the Potter series both breaks new ground and adheres to longstanding narrative formulas, readers can enhance their enjoyment of these epic adventures by better understanding their place in literary history.Along with the seven foundational novels of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and Beyond assesses the extraordinary range of supplementary material concerning the young wizard and his allies, including the films of the books, the subsequent film series of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the theatrical spectacle Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and a range of other Potter-inspired narratives. Beyond the world of Potter, Pugh surveys Rowling's literary fiction The Casual Vacancy and her detective series featuring Cormoran Strike, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Through this comprehensive overview of Rowling's body of work, Pugh reveals the vast web of connections between yesteryear's stories and Rowling's vivid creations.

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Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference challenged the foundations of white authority--and linked the Americas together. In Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery John Garrison Marks examines how these individuals built lives in freedom for themselves and their families in two of the Atlantic World's most important urban centers: Cartagena, along the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, and Charleston, in the lowcountry of North America's Atlantic coast. Marks reveals how skills, knowledge, reputation, and personal relationships helped free people of color improve their fortunes and achieve social distinction in ways that undermined whites' claims to racial superiority.Built upon research conducted on three continents, this book takes a comparative approach to understanding the contours of black freedom in the Americas. It reveals in new detail the creative and persistent attempts of free black people to improve their lives and that of their families. It examines how various paths to freedom, responses to the Haitian Revolution, opportunities to engage in skilled labor, involvement with social institutions, and the role of the church all helped shape the lived experience of free people of color in the Atlantic World.As free people of color worked to improve their individual circumstances, staking claims to rights, privileges, and distinctions not typically afforded to those of African descent, they engaged with white elites and state authorities in ways that challenged prevailing racial attitudes. While whites across the Americas shared common doubts about the ability of African-descended people to survive in freedom or contribute meaningfully to society, free black people in Cartagena, Charleston, and beyond conducted themselves in ways that exposed cracks in the foundations of American racial hierarchies. Their actions represented early contributions to the long fight for recognition, civil rights, and racial justice that continues today.

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Powerful and mysterious, sharks inspire both fascination and fear. Worldwide, oceans are home to some five-hundred species, and of those, fifty-six are known to reside in or pass through the waters off the coast of both North and South Carolina. At any given time, waders, swimmers, and surfers enjoying these waters are frequently within just one-hundred feet of a shark. While it's unnerving to know that sharks often swim just below the surface in the shallows, Clay Creswell, a shark-bite investigator for the Shark Research Institute's Global Shark Attack File, explains that attacks on humans are extremely rare. In 2019 the International Shark Attack File confirmed sixty-four unprovoked attacks on humans, including three in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. While acknowledging that they pose real dangers to humans, Creswell believes the fear of sharks is greatly exaggerated. During his sixteen-year association with the Shark Research Institute, he has investigated more than one hundred shark-related incidents and has maintained a database of all shark–human encounters along the Carolina coastlines back to 1817. Creswell uses this data to expose the truth and history of this often-sensationalized topic. Beyond the statistics related to attacks in the Carolina waters, Sharks in the Shallows offers a history of shark–human interactions and an introduction to the world of shark attacks. Creswell details the conditions that increase a person's chances of an encounter, profiles the three species most often involved in attacks, and reveals the months and time of day with the highest probability of an encounter. With a better understanding of sharks' responses to their environment, and what motivates them to attack humans, he hopes people will develop a greater appreciation of the invaluable role sharks play in our marine environment.

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An odyssey from pre–Civil War Charleston to post–World War II Minneapolis through immigrants' eyesThe histories of US immigrants do not always begin and end in Ellis Island and northeastern cities. Many arrived earlier and some migrated south and west, fanning out into their vast new country. They sought a renewed life, fresh prospects, and a safe harbor, despite a nation that was not always welcoming and not always tolerant. How to Become an American begins with a widow's abandoned diary—and from there author Daniel Wolff examines the sweeping history of immigration into the United States through the experiences of one unnamed, seemingly unremarkable Jewish family, and, in the process, makes their lives remarkable. It is a deeply human odyssey that journeys from pre–Civil War Charleston, South Carolina, to post–World War II Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some ways, the family's journey parallels that of the nation, as it struggled to define itself through the Industrial Age. A persistent strain of loneliness permeates this story, and Wolff holds up this theme for contemplation. In a country that prides itself on being "a nation of immigrants," where "all men are created equal," why do we end up feeling alone in the land we love?

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The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670-1720 is a graphic account of South Carolina's tumultuous beginnings, when calamity, violence, and ruthless exploitation were commonplace. With extraordinary detail and analysis, John J. Navin reveals the hardships that were experienced by people of all ethnicities and all stations in life during the first half-century of South Carolina's existence--years of misery caused by nature, pathogens, greed, and recklessness. From South Carolina's founding in 1670 through 1720, a cadre of men rose to political and economic prominence, while ordinary colonists, enslaved Africans, and indigenous groups became trapped in a web of violence and oppression. Navin explains how eight English aristocrats, the Lords Proprietors, came to possess the vast Carolina grant and then enacted elaborate plans to recruit and control colonists as part of a grand moneymaking scheme. But those plans went awry, and the mainstays of the economy became hog and cattle ranching, lumber Products, naval stores, deerskin exports, and the calamitous Indian slave trade. The Settlers' relentless pursuit of wealth Set the colony on a path toward prosperity but also toward a fatal dependency on slave labor. Rice would produce immense fortunes in South Carolina, but not during the colony's first fifty years. Religious and political turmoil instigated by Settlers from Barbados eventually led to a total rejection of proprietary authority. Using a variety of primary sources, Navin describes challenges that colonists faced, Setbacks they experienced, and the effects of policies and practices initiated by elites and proprietors. Storms, fires, epidemics, and armed conflicts destroyed property, lives, and dreams. Threatened by the Native Americans they exploited, by the Africans they enslaved, and by their French and Spanish rivals, South Carolinians lived in continual fear. For some it was the Price they paid for financial success. But for most there were no riches, and the possibility of a sudden, violent death was overshadowed by the misery of their day-to-day existence.

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Alice McDermott--winner of the National Book Award, American Book Award, and Whiting Award, and three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--recently published her eighth novel, The Ninth Hour, to great critical and popular acclaim. Her previous books, including Charming Billy, At Weddings and Wakes, and That Night, have been lauded as crowning achievements of Irish American fiction. An Irish American Catholic born and raised in New York, McDermott uses multiple identities and a distinctive, nonchronological narrative style to create an unmistakable trademark. She currently serves as the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. Understanding Alice McDermott begins with a brief biography and transitions into a linear inquiry of McDermott's published works. In addition to interrogating her recurring motifs of memory and heritage, Margaret Hallissy tracks various themes that appear throughout the novels--religion, generational trauma, geography, family, motherhood, and displacement--topics that intertwine and inform the mentality of McDermott's characters. This volume deftly leads the reader through each of McDermott's novels, seeking connections and facilitating conversations among her earliest and most recent works. Hallissy demonstrates a deep critical understanding of intersections in McDermott's canon. Her characters in some ways are beleaguered by society's perception of them--uneducated, lower-middle-class immigrants or children of immigrants--but are also positively defined by their collective dream of a lost homeland and the shared hardship of motherhood. By tracing the shifting themes and motifs through eight novels, uncollected short stories, and essays published during McDermott's fruitful career, Understanding Alice McDermott provides a window into the decades-long development of a contemporary master.

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Nancy Roberts's Southern Ghost Lore Revival--Exhumed and Improved for Fearless Readers.Nancy Roberts has often been described to as the "First Lady of American Folklore" and the Title is well deserved. Throughout her decades-long career, Roberts documented supernatural experiences and interviewed hundreds of people about their recollections of encounters with the supernatural.This nationally renowned writer began her undertaking in this ghostly realm as a freelance writer for the Charlotte Observer. Encouraged by Carl Sandburg, who enjoyed her stories and articles, Roberts wrote her first book in 1958. Aptly called a "custodian of the twilight zone" by Southern Living magazine, Roberts based her suspenseful stories on interviews and her rich knowledge of American folklore. Her stories were always rooted in history, which earned her a certificate of commendation from the American Association of State and Local History for her books on the Carolinas and Appalachia.

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The Battle of Eutaw Springs took place on September 8, 1781, and was among the last in the War of Independence. It was brutal in its combat and reprisals, with Continental and Whig militia fighting British regulars and Loyalist regiments. Although its outcome was seemingly inconclusive, the battle, fought near present-day Eutawville, South Carolina, contained all the elements that defined the war in the South. In Eutaw Springs: The Final Battle of the American Revolution’s Southern Campaign, Robert M. Dunkerly and Irene B. Boland tell the story of this lesser known and under-studied battle of the Revolutionary War’s Southern Campaign. Shrouded in myth and misconception, the battle has also been overshadowed by the surrender of Yorktown.Eutaw Springs represented lost opportunities for both armies. The American forces were desperate for a victory in 1781, and Gen. Nathanael Greene finally had the ground of his own choosing. British forces under Col. Alexander Stewart were equally determined to keep a solid grip on the territory they still held in the South Carolina lowcountry.In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, both armies sustained heavy casualties with each side losing nearly 20 percent of its soldiers. Neither side won the hard-fought battle, and controversies plagued both sides in the aftermath. Dunkerly and Boland analyze the engagement and its significance within the context of the war’s closing months, study the area’s geology and setting, and recount the action using primary sources, aided by recent archaeology.

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During William Gilmore Simms's life (1806-1870), book reviews and critical essays became vital parts of American literary culture and intellectual discourse. Simms was an assiduous reviewer and essayist, proving by example the importance of those genres. William Gilmore Simms's Selected Reviews on Literature and Civilization publishes for the first time in book form sixty-two examples of the writer's hundreds of newspaper and periodical reviews and book notes as well as four important critical essays. Together, the reviews and essays reveal the regional, national, and international dimensions of Simms's intellectual interests.To frame the two distinct parts of Selected Reviews, James Everett Kibler, Jr., and David Moltke-Hansen have written a general introduction that considers the development of book reviewing and the authorship of essays in cultural and historical contexts. In part one, Kibler offers an introduction that examines Simms's reviewing habits and the aesthetic and critical values that informed the author's reviews. Kibler then publishes selected texts of reviews and provides historical and cultural backgrounds for each selection. Simms was an early proponent of the critical theories of Romantics such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edgar Allan Poe. Widely read in European history and literature, he reviewed works published in French, German, and classics in original Greek and Latin and in translation. Simms also was an early, ardent advocate of works of local color and of southern ""backwoods"" humorists of his day. Simms published notices of seven of Herman Melville's novels, the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and favorably reviewed Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or, Life in the Woods.Simms published numerous review essays of twenty thousand or more words in literary journals and also republished two collections in book form. These volumes treated such subjects as Americanism in literature and the American Revolution in South Carolina. Yet, as part two of Selected Reviews demonstrates, Simms ranged much more widely in the intellectual milieu. Such cultural and political topics as the 1848 revolution in France, the history of the literary essay, the roles of women in the American Revolution, and the activities of the southern convention in Nashville in 1850 captured Simms's attention. Moltke-Hansen's introduction to part two examines Simms's roles in, and responses to, the Romantic critical revolution and the other revolutions then roiling Europe and America.

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New Politics in the Old South is the first scholarly biography of Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings, a key figure in South Carolina and national political developments in the second half of the twentieth century. Throughout his career Hollings was renowned for his willingness to voice unpleasant truths, as when he called for the peaceful acceptance of racial desegregation at Clemson University in 1963 and acknowledged the existence of widespread poverty and malnutrition in South Carolina in 1969. David T. Ballantyne uses Hollings’s career as a lens for examining the upheaval in southern politics and society after World War II.Hollings’s political career began in 1948, when he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. He served as governor from 1959 to 1963 and then as a U.S. senator from 1966 until he retired in 2005. Ballantyne illuminates Hollings’s role in forging a “southern strategy” that helped move southern Democrats away from openly endorsing white supremacy and toward acknowledging the interests of racial minorities, though this approach was halting and reluctant at times. Unlike many southern politicians who emerged as reactionary figures during the civil rights era, Hollings adapted to the changing racial politics of the 1960s while pursuing a clear course—Vietnam War hawk, fiscal conservative, regional economic booster, and free-trade opponent.While Hollings was at times an atypical southern senator, his behavior in the 1960s and 1970s served as a model for survival as a southern Democrat. His approach to voting rights, military spending, and social and cultural issues was mirrored by many southern Democrats between the 1970s and 1990s. Hollings’s career demonstrated an alternative to hard-edged political conservatism, one that was conspicuously successful throughout his Senate tenure.

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What explains the "triumph of capitalism"? Why do people so often respond positively to discussions favoring it while shutting down arguments against it? Overwhelmingly theories regarding capitalism's resilience have focused on individual choice bolstered by careful rhetorical argumentation. In this penetrating study, however, Catherine Chaput shows that something more than choice is at work in capitalism's ability to thrive in public practice and imagination--more even than material resources (power) and cultural imperialism (ideology). That "something," she contends, is market affect. Affect, says Chaput, signifies a semi-autonomous entity circulating through individuals and groups. Physiological in nature but moving across cultural, material, and environmental boundaries, affect has three functions: it opens or closes individual receptivity; it pulls or pushes individual identification; and it raises or lowers individual energies. This novel approach begins by connecting affect to rhetorical theory and offers a method for tracking its three modalities in relation to economic markets. Each of the following chapters compares a major theorist of capitalism with one of his important critics, beginning with the juxtaposition of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, who Set the agenda not only for arguments endorsing and critiquing capitalism but also for the affective energies associated with these positions. Subsequent chapters restage this initial debate through pairs of economic theorists--John Maynard Keynes and Thorstein Veblen, Friedrich Hayek and Theodor Adorno, and Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith--who represent key historical moments. In each case, Chaput demonstrates, capitalism's critics have fallen short in their rhetorical effectiveness. Chaput concludes by exploring possibilities for escaping the straitjacket imposed by these debates. In particular she points to the biopolitical lectures of Michel Foucault as offering a framework for more persuasive anticapitalist critiques by reconstituting people's conscious understandings as well as their natural instincts.

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Claiming Freedom is a noteworthy and dynamic analysis of the transition African Americans experienced as they emerged from Civil War slavery, struggled through emancipation, and then forged on to become landowners during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction period in the Georgia lowcountry. Karen Cook Bell’s work is a bold study of the political and social strife of these individuals as they strived for and claimed freedom during the nineteenth century.Bell begins by examining the meaning of freedom through the delineation of acts of self-emancipation prior to the Civil War. Consistent with the autonomy that they experienced as slaves, the emancipated African Americans from the rice region understood citizenship and rights in economic terms and sought them not simply as individuals for the sake of individualism, but as a community for the sake of a shared destiny. Bell also examines the role of women and gender issues, topics she believes are understudied but essential to understanding all facets of the emancipation experience. It is well established that women were intricately involved in rice production, a culture steeped in African traditions, but the influence that culture had on their autonomy within the community has yet to be determined.A former archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, Bell has wielded her expertise in correlating federal, state, and local records to expand the story of the all-black town of 1898 Burroughs, Georgia, into one that holds true for all the American South. By humanizing the African American experience, Bell demonstrates how men and women leveraged their community networks with resources that enabled them to purchase land and establish a social, political, and economic foundation in the rural and urban post-war era.

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A fistful of bones and a mysterious treasure hunt--not quite what twelve-year-old Chicagoan Delta Wells is expecting when she arrives on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, to visit her grandparents for the summer! But when Pops tells her that his beloved Island History Museum may be demolished to make room for a golf resort, Delta visits the museum property and discovers a skeleton hidden in the marsh. The bones and a long-secret message from the past send Delta and her younger brother, Jax, on a race to unearth the island's secrets, save their grandfather's museum, and help complete a mission someone started more than 150 years ago.From the Civil War ruins of Hilton Head, to the site of the H. L. Hunley submarine in Charleston and the University of South Carolina's historic Horseshoe in Columbia, Delta and Jax's vacation is an exciting and educational adventure through history.

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A historical figure's attempts to secure freedom for America and her slaves winning a reputation for reckless bravery in a succession of major battles and sieges, John Laurens distinguished himself as one of the most zealous, self-sacrificing participants in the American Revolution. A native of South Carolina and son of Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress, John devoted his life to securing American independence. In this comprehensive biography, Gregory D. Massey recounts the young Laurens's wartime record --a riveting tale in its own right --and finds that even more remarkable than his military escapades were his revolutionary ideas concerning the rights of African Americans.Massey relates Laurens's desperation to fight for his country once revolution had begun. A law student in England, he joined the war effort in 1777, leaving behind his English wife and an unborn child he would never see. Massey tells of the young officer's devoted service as General George Washington's aide-de-camp, interaction with prominent military and political figures, and conspicuous military efforts at Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Newport, Charleston, Savannah, and Yorktown. Massey also recounts Laurens's survival of four battle wounds and six months as a prisoner of war, his controversial diplomatic mission to France, and his close friendship with Alexander Hamilton. Laurens's death in a minor battle in August 1782 was a tragic loss for the new state and nation. Unlike other prominent southerners, Laurens believed blacks shared a similar nature with whites, and he formulated a plan to free slaves in return for their service in the Continental Army. Massey explores the personal, social, and cultural factors that prompted Laurens to diverge so radically from his peers and to raise vital questions about the role African Americans would play in the new republic.

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Mao Zedong fundamentally transformed China from a Confucian society characterized by hierarchy and harmony into a socialist state guided by communist ideologies of class struggle and radicalization. It was a transformation made possible largely by Mao’s rhetorical ability to attract, persuade, and mobilize millions of Chinese people. Xing Lu’s book, Rhetoric of Mao Zedong, analyzes Mao’s speeches and writings over a span of sixty years, tracing the sources and evolution of Mao’s discourse, analyzing his skills as a rhetor and mythmaker, and assessing his symbolic power and continuing presence in contemporary China. Lu observes that Mao’s rhetorical legacy has been commoditized, culturally consumed, and politically appropriated since his death.Applying both Western rhetorical theories and Chinese rhetorical concepts to reach a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of his rhetorical legacy, Lu shows how Mao employed a host of rhetorical appeals and strategies drawn from Chinese tradition and how he interpreted the discourse of Marxism-Leninism to serve foundational themes of his message. She traces the historical contexts in which these themes, his philosophical orientations, and his political views were formed and how they transformed China and Chinese people. Lu also examines how certain ideas are promoted, modified, and appropriated in Mao’s rhetoric. Mao’s appropriation of Marxist theory of class struggle, his campaigns of transforming common people into new communist advocates, his promotion of Chinese nationalism, and his stand on China’s foreign policy all contributed to and were responsible for reshaping Chinese thought patterns, culture, and communication behaviors.

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Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World is a unique blend of cultural and architectural history that considers Jewish heritage as it expanded among the continents and islands linked by the Atlantic Ocean between the mid-fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Barry L. Stiefel achieves a powerful synthesis of material culture research and traditional historical research in his examination of the early modern Jewish diaspora in the New World. Through this generously illustrated work, Stiefel examines forty-six synagogues built in Europe, South America, the Caribbean Islands, colonial and antebellum North America, and Gibraltar to discover what liturgies, construction methods, and architectural styles were transported from the Old World to the New World. Some are famous--Touro in Newport, Rhode Island; Bevis Marks in London; and Mikve Israel in Curaçao--while others had short-lived congregations whose buildings were lost. The two great traditions of Judaism--Sephardic and Ashkenazic--found homes in the Atlantic World. Examining buildings and congregations that survive, Stiefel offers valuable insights on their connections and commonalities. If both the congregations and buildings are gone, the author re-creates them by using modern heritage preservation tools that have expanded the heuristic repertoire, tools from such diverse sources as architectural studies, archaeology, computer modelling and rendering, and geographic information systems. When combined these bring a richer understanding of the past than incomplete, uncertain traditional historical resources. Buildings figure as key indicators in Stiefel's analysis of Jewish life and social experience, while the author's immersion in the faith and practice of Judaism invigorates every aspect of his work.

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In Understanding Jonathan Coe, the first full-length study of the British novelist, Merritt Moseley surveys a writer whose experimental technique has become increasingly well received and critically admired. Coe is the recipient of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Medicis, the Priz du Meilleur Livre Entranger, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prizes for Fiction, and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction. His oeuvre includes eleven novels and three biographies--two of famous Hollywood actors Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart and one of English modernist novelist B. S. Johnson.Following an introductory overview of Coe's life and career, Moseley examines Coe's complex engagement with popular culture, his experimental technique, his political satire, and his broad-canvased depictions of British society. Though his first three books, An Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, and The Dwarves of Death, received little notice upon publication, Moseley shows their strengths as literary works and as precursors. In 1994 Coe gained visibility with What a Carve Up!, which has remained his most admired and discussed novel. He has since published a postmodern take on sleep disorders and university students, The House of Sleep; a two-volume roman-fleuve consisting of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle; a touching account of a lonely woman's life, The Rain before It Falls; a satiric vision of a misguided life, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim; and a domestic comedy thriller set at the 1958 world's fair in Brussels, Expo '58. Moseley explicates these works and discusses the recurring features of Coe's fiction: political consciousness, a deep artistic concern with the form of fiction, and comedy.

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Phoning Home is a collection of entertaining and thought-provoking essays featuring the author's quirky family, his Jewish heritage, and his New York City upbringing. Jacob M. Appel's recollections and insights, informed and filtered by his advanced degrees in medicine, law, and ethics, not only inspire nostalgic feelings but also offer insight into contemporary medical and ethical issues. At times sardonic and at others self-deprecating, Appel lays bare the most private aspects of his emotional life. ""We'd just visited my grandaunt in Miami Beach, the last time we would ever see her. I had my two travel companions, Fat and Thin, securely buckled into the backseat of my mother's foul-tempered Dodge Dart,"" writes Appel of his family vacation with his two favorite rubber cat toys. Shortly thereafter Fat and Thin were lost forever--beginning, when Appel was just six years old, what he calls his ""private apocalypse."" Both erudite and full-hearted, Appel recounts storylines ranging from a bout of unrequited love gone awry to the poignant romance of his grandparents. We learn of the crank phone calls he made to his own family, the conspicuous absence of Jell-O at his grandaunt's house, and family secrets long believed buried. The stories capture the author's distinctive voice--a blend of a physician's compassion and an ethicist's constant questioning.

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This is a discussion of the work of one of Britain's most highly regarded novelists and the winner of the 1998 Booker Prize. David Malcolm places Ian McEwan's work in the context of British literature's particular dynamism in the last decades of the 20th century. He also examines McEwan's relationship to feminism, concern with rationalism and science, use of moral perspective, and proclivity toward fragmentation. Malcolm offers close readings of McEwan's early short stories, which he recognizes as traditional and conservative in technique despite their shocking subject matter, and all of McEwan's novels. Employing the third novel, ""The Child in Time"", as the fulcrum for his discussion, Malcolm explores the themes of incest, espionage, moral self-flagellation, sexual fixation, political dysfunction, and personal antipathy evident in the other fiction. He illuminates the continuities obscured by the conventional approach to McEwan's fiction and raises the question whether McEwan is a novelist of brilliant fragments or of overall coherence.

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This book offers an introduction to the works of a Cajun writer who finds optimism in his blue-collar tales. Margaret Donovan Bauer presents the first book-length study of the Louisiana storyteller, who injects a seldom heard Cajun voice into Southern literature and offers a rare optimistic vision among other contemporary writers of the hardscrabble American South. Bauer surveys Tim Gautreaux's three novels - ""The Next Step in the Dance"", ""The Clearing, and ""The Missing"" - and two collections of short fiction - ""Same Place, Same Things"" and ""Welding with Children"" - to identify his major themes, character types, and structures. She views his chief contribution to Southern letters to be an authentic insider's view of Cajun culture, one resulting in a skillful, realistic, and sympathetic vision of historical and contemporary Acadiana in flux. Bauer addresses how Gautreaux's hopeful vision distinguishes him from other contemporary writers of the blue-collar South. She views Gautreaux's poor white protagonists as action-oriented characters who, while trapped by circumstances, still strive to affect positive change in their lives.

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